Sunday, January 25, 2009

Attack of the Beavers

There is a pretty stand of Sycamore Trees on the bank of our slice of Sylamore heaven. It's where we camp. We hadn't been for a visit in almost 3 months. Low and behold the beavers have been busy.

They are eating the bark and killing the trees.

This is all a welcome diversion from the plague of bad front page news elsewhere. But we've got to save those trees! The roots are doing a fine job of staving off flood erosion. ( We lost very little soil during the TWO 100 year floods in the Spring of 08. The lot next to us lost a great deal.)

Hi! There is a pretty easy solution to protecting trees from beavers: wrap them with 4-foot-tall, 4-inch wire mesh, about a foot away from the trees (to allow the trees to grow and so that beaver can't just climb up the mesh/tree and chomp above the top of the wire). Please see info in Animal Protection of New Mexico's brochure at http://www.apnm.org/campaigns.beavers/beaver_guide.pdf